Word: heroines
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...That decision has come back to haunt the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. Western intelligence agencies believe that Khan has become the kingpin of a heroin-trafficking enterprise that is a principal source of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. According to a Western antinarcotics official, since slipping out of Afghanistan after U.S. forces released him, Khan has helped al-Qaeda establish a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and in turn is using the drug revenues to purchase weapons and explosives. A Western law-enforcement official...
...renewed trade in opium has worsened all those problems. A recent World Bank report calculates that more than half of the country's economy is tied up in drugs. The combined income of farmers and in-country traffickers reached $2.23 billion last year?up from $1.3 billion in 2002. Heroin trafficking has long been the main source of funds for many local warlords' private armies, which continue to thwart Karzai's attempts to expand his authority beyond Kabul. But the drug trade is becoming even more dangerous: U.S. and British counterterrorism experts say al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies...
...Neither the Taliban nor al-Qaeda actually grows opium poppy. Their involvement is higher up the drug chain, where profits are fatter and so is their cut of the deal. Yasini, the Afghan antidrug czar, says the terrorists receive a share of profits from heroin sales by supplying gunmen to protect labs and convoys. Recent busts have revealed evidence of al-Qaeda's ties to the trade. On New Year's Eve, a U.S. Navy vessel in the Arabian Sea stopped a small fishing boat that was carrying no fish. After a search, says a Western antinarcotics official, "they found...
...rustic villages inspired the legend of Shangri-La.) Its distance from the political leaders in Beijing has traditionally made it something of an outlaw province, home to dozens of minority groups and, in centuries past, feudal warlords who ruled with nearly absolute control. Today it is the gateway for heroin traffic that drifts into China from Burma, Vietnam and Laos...
...Scattered along the drug route is China's largest concentration of heroin addicts. Yunnan has the highest IV-drug-use rates in China, and a recent U.N. AIDS report estimates that anywhere from 50% to 80% of the users are carrying the AIDS virus. HIV spread via unprotected sex is also on the rise here, accounting for 15% of HIV infections in 2000. All told, say health officials in Yunnan, this single province accounts for one-third of China's reported AIDS cases...